Saturday, July 25, 2009

Supposingly, we booked a place with our guesthouse to bring us to Chiang Rai. Unfortunately, we were told in the morning that the bus was fully booked. We had no choice but to travel on our own.

[9.30am] After packing everything, we paid the guesthouse's owner's husband to drive us to the Chiang Mai's bus station. We quickly bought the tickets to Chiang Rai.

While waiting for the bus to depart, we walked to a nearby 7-11 shop for breakfast. MinBee bought a hotdog, LeongKee bought a burger while Kuan and I bought cup noodles for breakfast.

[11.00am] We boarded the bus after that and finally gets moving at 11am. It's a rather long journey to Chiang Rai - 3 hours. We listen to mp3 and took a rest.

Sleepyboy caught on camera again!

After a while, the bus conductor started to distribute biscuits and a bottle of water to each passenger on board. Wow, never expect that coming.

Then, wet towels were given too! All with their company label - GreenBus.

[2.15pm] Finally reached Chiang Rai. We quickly look for counters that sell tickets to Chiang Kong. After we bought the tickets, we realized we don't have time to eat lunch. So we bought some snacks to eat on the bus.

[3.00pm] The bus depart from Chiang Rai heading towards Chiang Kong. The condition of the bus was much worse than the one we took before. No air-cond, no biscuits, no water, no wet towel, lots of boxes that the locals are transporting on the bus.

Kuan, MinBee, LeongKee and Me - on the way to Chiang Kong

While we have nothing to do. We ate our snacks bought earlier - custard cakes, and we took photos.

We bought the same type of food for our trekking back in Chiang Mai, because we kinda like the cake.

[6.00pm] After a another grueling 3-hour ride on the bus, our butts almost gone flat. We reached Chiang Kong town and took a tuk-tuk to bring us to somewhere where we can look for a guesthouse to stay.

The sky was getting dark and we finally decided to stay at Boom House after surveying the prices around. There were not many rooms available, so we took 1 good room and 1 bad room.

What is bad room? No air-cond, no attached bathroom and the bed is super-duper hard. And I mean it. I look under the bed sheet and I saw a mattress below it. But when I hit on the mattress, it was like hitting on a piece of board. *THUP* Me no kidding!

[6.30pm] We cleaned up and walked around town, bought some snacks and water for the long day tomorrow and went to withdraw some money. It was like a ghost town, nothing much to see around and most shops were closed.

[7.00pm] At last we found hope to cure our hunger. We found a shop that sells noodles - soup and dry. We quickly ordered and wait for our food anxiously. We have not eat a proper meal the whole day, everyone is extremely hungry.

[8.30pm] Very satisfied with the cheap and delicious soup noodles, we then walked around to look for travel packages that can bring us across to Laos. We found that the prices were almost the same, so we took the one near our guesthouse - Easy Bar. That guy looks friendly too.

You'll need these if you're going to Laos

We paid for the border-crossing package and head back to rest as we need to wake up pretty early for the next day.

For your information, crossing the border from Chiang Kong, Thailand to Luang Prabhang, Laos is no easy task. Takes two whole days to get to civilization. I shall talk more on my coming posts. Billy, out.